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Riverbank Reverie

by

Paddy Gormley

Read by awl on Monday 3rd October 2005

Riverbank Reverie is set in the late 1920s, in the realm of Kenneth Grahame's imagination.

The success of The Wind in the Willows (1908) has furnished KG with every material comfort, but he regrets his enduring marriage to Elspeth Thomson and feels guilty and ashamed at the suicide of their son Alastair ("Mouse") (1920).

The Grahames are living in their final home: Church Cottage, Pangbourne. KG takes every opportunity to escape into "countries of the mind" by taking long walks to an isolated spot on the riverbank.

In Riverbank Reverie, KG recounts the story of The Wind in the Willows in a verse "translation" in the course of twelve solitary walks, each corresponding to a chapter of the book.

This excerpt comprises my draft of Chapter 7, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, in which the Water Rat and Mole search for Portly, the young Otter who has gone astray.

Kenneth Grahame
 Peter Sutton
Water Rat
 Victoria Kempton
Mole
 Wendy Woodbridge
Directed by
 Lucy Appleby

The Riverbank Reverie website
feature audio excerpts from this reading
and part of the audience discussion that followed it:
www.riverbankreverie.info

 

  

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